Here are 6 tips on Image SEO that i thought was a good read. Have a great Friday everyone. Like always, if you want to comment on this article, please create a thread so we can go into more details.

6 Tips on Image SEO

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Images as an asset for organic search results and search engine optimization are often overlooked. Images can drive traffic through image search as well as inclusion in universal search results.

There are actually several dimensions to image optimization that involves better placement in search results, optimization for user experience and in some cases, optimization for easier sharing of images on the social web.

For image SEO, it can be helpful to think of optimizing images like optimizing a tiny webpage within your page. Things like url structure, anchor text and descriptive tagging are factors for optimizing images for search engines, just like regular webpages.

Here are a few tips for optimizing your images to improve their performance on the page and in search.

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SEO Tip of the Day for Saturday, June 12, 2010 - SEO Link Types and Tactics

This is a very good blog post and a great tip for Saturday.

Link Building: SEO Link Types and Tactics

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Is there a magic SEO bullet for link building or building the proper quality, theme, volume or type of links? Not necessarily, but having a solid strategy and series of tactics at your disposal never hurts when applying the “think before you link” motto

Whoever said links are not important for search engine optimization are merely trying to dissuade you from pushing their website aside in search engines if you acquire the proper type and mixture of link equity. Search engine rankings are collective by-product of content, site structure, popularity and links; but since this post is about links and their various metrics… let’s get right to the good stuff.

If you are searching for proven SEO tips for new website promotion, keep in mind, there are multiple techniques to utilize when promoting a new website (each with its corresponding advantages and effects and disadvantages or short-comings).

The best way to offset variance is to apply structured, persistent and ethical tactics that correspond to both search engine guidelines and end-user conversions. Keep in mind, regardless of the method, it should be repeatable, scalable and provide long-term value.

SEO Tip of the Day for Monday, June 14, 2010 - Trust and Relevance Signals

This is a really good blog post i read earlier at work that i'd like to share.

SEO Rankings, Trust and Relevance Signals

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Who said rankings always make sense. Sometimes the SEO signals, relevance and the tip of the iceberg analysis just doesn’t add up.

No matter how many times you have seen or used optimization tactics before, there is always a chance (as algorithms are like living breathing organisms) that something will change or go below the surface where it is nearly impossible to attribute to a correlating group of causes and effects.

This convergence is where the cusp of information retrieval meets the wild west online where anything goes and ruthless competition thrives. Sure, anyone can go out there and build links like a bat out of hell and create some temporal rankings for a new website, but what about those aged authority sites that simmered for years and rank on their own latent and pent up “ranking credit” as a result of the trust and exuberance of their content.

SEO Tip of the Day for Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - Search Engine Ranking Problems

This sort of a reminder for everyone to take SEO seriously and watch what you are changing/doing on your site.

5 Ways to Kill Your Search Rankings & Their Solutions

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One of the biggest fears for web site owners that have long relied on search traffic for new business is a sudden drop in search engine rankings. Some webmasters are experiencing this very situation as a result of Google’s recent Mayday update (Matt Cutts video).

In most cases, it takes a lot for a tenured web site to mess up it’s search visibility. In other situations, it doesn’t take much at all. Avoiding mistakes that result in exclusion, penalties and more often confusion for search engines are often overlooked. Don’t fall victim to carelessness and ignorance when it comes to maintaining the search visibility achieved from years of content and online marketing by avoiding these common mistakes:

If you have any questions about what's been mentioned in this blog post, just search V7N for a solution. There might just be a thread already on each of these topics, or feel free to create a new thread if you need some advice.

SEO Tip of the Day for Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - Link Volume, Velocity and Diversity

I just got this SEO tip of the day in before midnight. (I go by my time zone )

Don't skim through this article but take your time and read it.

SEO Link Building: Link Volume, Velocity and Diversity

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Information retrieval and SEO have a sympathetic relationship, however, built within the fabric of search engine algorithms are specific filters (such as null sets) that when they observe a high frequency of a specific metric have a tendency to dampen or normalize its influence – particularly pertaining to links

This is why it is important to create a robust link profile featuring a variety of link types which all serve their specific function. With so many ways for people to build links, it almost makes your head spin when considering the options.

SEO Tip of the Day for Thursday, June 17, 2010 - How to Bait Search Engine Spiders

Once again i just made it in before midnight my time zone with the SEO tip of the day. I found a good article that i really liked myself. Sometimes getting back to the basic's can do wonders.

SEO Basics: How to Bait Search Engine Spiders

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Search engine spiders thrive on fresh content and websites with an abundance of PageRank, authority and pizazz. Instead of making SEO more complicated than necessary, sometimes you need to “go back” to basics to move forward and simplify your search engine optimization approach

Aside from all of the strategies, methods and tactics, tweaking pages and waiting for spiders to re-index those changes on your web pages is 50% of the SEO process.

With that in mind, here is a simple but effective way to increase crawl-frequency and feed the search engine spiders…

SEO Tip of the Day for Friday, June 18, 2010 - Canonicalization Best Practices

For those of you who don't really understand the canonicalization talk, this blog post may help you out a little.

8 Canonicalization Best Practices In Plain English

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Canonicalization sounds like a process for recognizing sainthood, or maybe a training course in aiming large projectile weapons. But it’s actually one of the most important aspects of organic SEO. Good canonicalization means search engines crawl more pages of your site; it means that link authority and PageRank get consolidated, so you have a stronger link profile; and it means fewer broken links from other sites. Bad canonicalization gets you all that stuff, but with the opposite effect.

Canonicalization defined

The Ian-Lurie-mangles-the-meaning-so-computer-geeks-cringe-definition of canonicalization is: “every resource on your web site has a single web address.”

Every resource means every page, every image, every video, etc..

Single web address means there’s only one Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for each page of content, image, video, etc..

SEO Tip of the Day for Saturday, June 19, 2010 - Optimizing for the User Experience

How many of you optimize for user experience? With that being said, please read this whole article before you comment on the blog post itself.

Optimizing for the User Experience

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"Instead of chasing after the search engines, chase after the user experience because the search engines are chasing after the user experience" -- Matt Cutts

To cynical SEOs, declarations such as the one above are ostensibly holistic mumbo jumbo -- they're the unrealistic musings from a group that has never had income completely dependant on search engine rankings.

I would heed caution to those tempted to label the Cutts mantra as propaganda intended to distract from the real factors that cause sites to rank (namely, link building). By no means is link building going away; it's the premier and most accurate factor in determining website relevance. However, it's fairly obvious that the importance of incoming links is becoming a bit marginalized by other, newer components.

SEO Tip of the Day for Sunday, June 20, 2010 - SEO Best Practices: Getting Started

This is a good one to read. In this article, it'll briefly goes over Site Structure, Content Development, Sitemaps and Internal & External Links. This is a 2 part series and i will post the second one in this thread once it goes live. (Don't know when that'll happen)

Btw, this tip is for Sunday since i forgot. lol

SEO Tips for SEO Best Practices

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One of the most undervalued aspects of SEO is the amount of time it takes to develop a website properly. People often wonder why SEO pricing is so exorbitant, it is because you have to work holistically across various metrics and have a baseline of SEO best practices in order to create the appropriate signals that translate into website and page authority.

Having said that, here is a checklist of the most important things you can do today, that will have the most impact for your web property tomorrow and keep your development process on track for the long-haul without bleeding through resources in the short-term.

There are already a few blog comments on this article so if you want to respond to this article, please do so on the blog or create a thread here on V7N about this and we will get a good conversation going on.

SEO Tip of the Day for Monday, June 21, 2010 - Quality links to your site

This tip of the day is straight from the Google Webmaster central blog. Please read the whole blog post because you will find it helpful and interesting.

Quality links to your site

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A popular question on our Webmaster Help Forum is in regard to best practices for organic link building. There seems to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on how to approach the topic. Different perspectives have been shared, and we would also like to explain our viewpoint on earning quality links.

If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content -- something that lets your expertise shine -- people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can...

SEO Tip of the Day for Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - Techniques to Promote Your Nonprofit

Todays tip is for the nonprofit niche. This is a good blog post with some SEO tips/techniques that may help out your site get ranked better then your competitors.

SEO Techniques to Promote Your Nonprofit

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial for any nonprofit that wants to have an online presence. This is not just limited to for profit companies that are trying to market themselves. It means more than just building a website and assuming your organization will win search rankings. You need to practice SEO in order to place higher than other nonprofits with the same name or in the same arena.

Where did your organization rank? If you do some proper SEO, your site should appear at the very top of the search rankings, or at least the top 5. If your SEO efforts are lacking, your site may not have even appeared on the first page. We have seen several nonprofits whose websites..

If you would like comment on this blog post, please post on the sitepronews blog post or create a thread here on the V7N forum. I am sure our SEO guru's here have some SEO tips for nonprofit sites. There are a lot of these sites online and getting ranked high is a good thing for your site.

SEO Tip of the Day for Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - Optimizing Your 404 Page

How many of you ever Optimized Your 404 Page? Do you even know what one is? I have a plugin for my blog that handles this for me. It just redirects the visitor to my homepage so the visitor does not leave right away but perhaps stay a bit and look around a little longer. I may change this. I have some idea's of my own i may want to test out.

Not having a 404 page setup, may be the cause of some trafffic loss. Think about it, if you make a change to a page on your site and you don't have a 404 page, will the visitor leave your site right away or actually give your site another chance and stay longer? Take a look at this blog post for some good information.

Are You Optimizing Your 404 Page? Yes, Your 404 Page.

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When you visit a non-existent URL on a website, you’ll often come face to face with an error similar to the following:

“Oops! We couldn’t find what you were looking for.”

or…

“Page not found.”

What you’re actually seeing when you come across this error is the “404 Page”, which is a page that your browser goes to when the page you were looking for was – well – not found.

Common reasons for landing on a 404 page include:

A misplaced letter or misspelled word in the URL when typing manually into the browser’s address bar.

A misplaced letter or misspelled word in an existing link.

The link or URL is typed correctly, but the page just no longer exists (aka. broken link)

A redirection error.

Whatever the path may be, when people land on your 404 Page they will most likely exit your site.

It’s sad, but true. People are spoiled, especially when it comes to searching and surfing online, so when they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for – it’s on to the next thing like there’s no tomorrow.

There are a few good comments already on this blog post if you would like to respond to the creator of this article. If you want to talk about the 404 page on V7N, just create a thread with a link to this article so we can discuss this.

SEO Tip of the Day for Thursday, June 24, 2010 - The Power Of Long Tail Keywords

With the MayDay going on now everyone is scrambling for cover or for good rankings in google. Some sites have lost lot's of traffic because of this update. Here is a good article over on sitepronews blog that you should read.

Never Underestimate the Real Power of Long-Tail Keywords

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Beginning in May 2010, Mayday became the code word for a major ranking change in Google and new attacks of “Google paranoia” by webmasters everywhere…

Google has always advised that we, as webmasters, should focus on giving searchers what they are trying to give Google’s search users: the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers.

and yes, it's a bit of a long post but well worth it. Also read the comments on this post for more information. We do have some threads on the mayday update and long tail keywords if you want to respond to them. Just search the forum for the threads.

SEO Tip of the Day for Friday, June 25, 2010 - Monitor Your Competition

Do you know the websites that are in the same niche as you? Do you monitor there rankings or the SEO tactic's they are doing? I thought this was a great article to read. I spy on my competition and i am sure that i am not the only one here who does this. Take a look at this article when you get a chance.

8 Easy Ways To Monitor The SEO Your Competition Is Doing

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If you’re a marketer and you’re currently tied up with other initiatives (campaigns, new site launch, etc.), or a search professional bogged down with doing keyword research, a technical audit, or staying up with the latest trends, remember to come up for air every now and then (at least once a month if not more) to take a look at what your competition is doing. Here’s some tips on how to effectively go about this.

To start, take a look at your existing keyword landscape and identify your “Top 10” Keywords. These are terms that you have deemed business critical to have a top ranking position for. Odds are, you will probably not have a #1 ranking for each term. In the cases where you don’t, take a look at what sites are outranking yours and determine why.

SEO Tip of the Day for Saturday, June 26, 2010 - External Deep Linking

Have you been focusing on external deep linking? Just found a few days old article about this subject that i wanted to share in here for the next tip.

How External Deep Linking and More Content Can Boost Your Rankings

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Everyone wants a better ranking. Heck, we all know that that nice boost from position 8 to 5, or 2 to 1 for your targeted search term can mean a world of difference in the pageviews and clicks you receive, and that’s probably a metric you’re aggressively tracking. But how can you surpass the competition in your targeted search rankings?

External deep linking is something a lot of websites neglect, which can cause you to be at a big disadvantage with your SEO strategy. Websites spend too much time optimizing their home page to...

Don't just focus on your homepage rankings but also focus on external deep linking also. Feel free to post a comment on the blog or create a thread about external deep linking if we don't have one already. I have been focusing on this for awhile and still have lots to learn.

Since i am late in updating this sticky and really tired, i am tossing in some news about Bing.

This one is from webpronews blog.

Bing Changes Could Attract More Users, More SEO Focus

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As we talked about in a recent WPN article, it's time to start taking your Bing optimization seriously if you haven't been already. For one, Bing will soon power Yahoo search. For two, Bing deliver's Facebook's web search results, while Facebook is giving people more reasons to search with them.

Bing is making changes of its own. It's been a very big week for the search engine (or "decision engine") if you will. It's up to you to decide if any of these changes will have a direct effect on you, but some of them may attract more users in general, and if nothing else, that gives you even more of a reason to give Bing a fair amount of your focus.

SEO Tip of the Day for Monday, June 28, 2010 - How to Use Strong Keywords

Mondays tip is about Strong Keywords. I don't know where you have been latley but keywords are a little important these days.

Read the whole article please. There is more then what i am posting in this thread to check out.

How to Use Strong Keywords

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Of all the important parts of creating excellent content, using strong, keyword-rich content is among the most important. Keywords, links and site visits help searchers find your content and website. Without strong keywords your potential visitors won’t find you. If you are not using the same keywords in your content and meta tags that searchers use when they begin their search in Google, Bing, or other search engines, your site will not show up in the search results.

Ok, one more tip on Keywords. I am sure most of you are happy with the keywords that you are using and have already did the hours of researching them but it never hurts to learn this over again.

All Good Content Starts Here: Keyword Research

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One of the great things about developing content for your website is that, with a little research, you can know exactly who your target audience is and how create content to meet their needs. Spending a few minutes before setting pen-to-paper, or fingers-to-keys, can tell you just about everything you need to know about what types of things people are searching for on the web. From that, you can determine what kind of content you need to reach your audience.

Using keyword research tools provided by the search engines and third party keyword platforms can help you a great deal in writing for your target consumers. Not only can you learn what keywords people are using, but keyword research can also help you craft your content using the words and phrases that your audience searches for most frequently. This helps you attract the widest audience possible while also...

So far no one has made any comments on the blog about this so if you have anything to add or debate... be the first one to post a blog comment. If you have some tips or important information on keyword research, please create a new thread so we can discuss.